OPENING STATEMENT: “We played a good football game against a good football team yesterday; we just didn’t make the play we needed to make to win the game. But, it was a competitive game. Our guys fought all the way until the end in all phases, and that was a positive, so we’re going to try to build on that as we finish up the season and try to get some wins under our belt. That’s the focus and that’s what I’ve been talking to them about today and this is what we’re going to try to follow up on. As I mentioned after the game, the offensive line I thought did a nice job, both in the running game and in protection, particularly in pass protection against the No. 1 sack team in the NFL. Donald Stephenson particularly, his first start against two pretty good rushers, I thought he did a nice job and held his own. The runners, they ran good. The receivers weren’t involved as much in the passing game because we didn’t throw the ball as much, but they did a nice job of blocking. As you look at it, you can see that the receivers, they blocked very well during the course of the game. That allowed Jamaal [Charles] to get the kind of yards that he gets, which is a positive for us. Now, we need to be better on third down, we need to be better in the red zone and we will work on those things and try to get that done. Defensively, I thought the defense played a good game against really a high-powered offense and a Hall of Fame quarterback. For the most part, they gave up a drive at the end of the first half. I think that was a long drive there and we made some mistakes in that drive and ended up giving up a touchdown. Then, in the second half at the end of the game when we needed to stop them, we weren’t able to stop them there to give the ball back to the offense. So, those were two drives there that were critical in my eyes as I looked at it. We’re going to try to build on that effort, try to maintain that effort and try to win the game Sunday. With that, I’ll open it up.”

BOB FESCOE (610 SPORTS RADIO): Jon Baldwin hasn’t been able to get very involved over the last two years. Why do you think that is?

CRENNEL: “He hasn’t gotten as many opportunities, and you look at Jon, he tried during the course of the game. He was open on one play, but Brady [Quinn] went the other way. If he would have gone to Jon, it might have been a touchdown. As coverages develop, as things develop in the game, the quarterback goes from one side to the other side and they just haven’t been going to him as much.”

FESCOE: Has he bought in to what you guys are trying to do?

CRENNEL: “Yes, I think he has. I think he wants to try to help this team win.”

DANNY CLINKSCALE (SPORTS RADIO 810): Is he a good practice player to the point where he has the trust of the quarterbacks?

CRENNEL: “Every time you go through practice, Jon has worked very hard during practice. When I looked at him in the offseason and what he was able to do in the offseason, they seemed to trust him quite a bit there and we’ve still got the same quarterbacks.”

ADAM TEICHER (KANSAS CITY STAR): Why was Jamar Newsome active yesterday but Steve Breaston and Devon Wylie weren’t?CRENNEL: “I wanted to bring Newsome up to play the X position a little bit, to give us a little bit more speed on the offense. Now, Wylie is primarily a slot receiver as opposed to an X receiver, so that was the reason Newsome over Wylie.”

FESCOE: How did you think Brady played yesterday?

CRENNEL: “I thought he managed the game, didn’t turn the ball over, so that’s critical to this team.”

FESCOE: Has he been able to give you a spark since taking over?

CRENNEL: “We haven’t turned the ball over, so that’s my first thing there. Let’s not turn it over because when we don’t turn it over, we’re in the games and we’re competitive and we have a chance to win. Now, we’re going to build on the other things that we need to build on.”

ROBERT FORD (610 SPORTS RADIO): Is it safe to say the rust has worn off for Quinn?

CRENNEL: “He’s still working on it.”

BOB GRETZ (BOBGRETZ.COM): He was 0-for-10 with an interception to end the game. Was there a reason for that?

CRENNEL: “He threw across his body a couple times which he should not have done.”

JEFFREY FLANAGAN (FOX SPORTS KANSAS CITY): When you look back, do you wish you would have gone for a couple of those fourth downs?

CRENNEL: “No. When I made the decisions that I made, I had good reasons for making them and you don’t look back. You make your decision, and if they work, they think you’re a genius. If they don’t work, then you go the other way, you’re a dummy.”

FLANAGAN: When you’re struggling to get touchdowns, is there a point where you try to be a gambler in those situations?

CRENNEL: “At the point in the game, let’s say, if that had occurred maybe in the second half rather than in the first quarter, maybe then you go for it at that time.”

CLINKSCALE: Has it become such a scoring league where it is impossible to win a game without scoring touchdowns? Does that affect your thinking at all?

CRENNEL: “Nope, it really doesn’t. You have to do what you think is right at the time, and I felt like going against this particular team, that points on the board is going to be important. The more points, the better, but you definitely need points on the board. If you don’t put points on the board, then that’s not going to be good enough. If you don’t put enough points on the board, that’s not good enough, and we didn’t put enough points on the board.”

TEICHER: What about the injury situation? Do you know any more?

CRENNEL: “Dexter [McCluster], he’s got a head injury and he’s going through some evaluations today, and we’ll see what they tell us later on and I’ll know more later on about him. Kendrick [Lewis] had a shoulder, and they’re evaluating his shoulder. I think he’s having MRIs today to find out if there’s damage in that shoulder, but they didn’t seem overly concerned at the time about it. They feel like he should be able to come back.”

TEICHER: What about Branden Albert?

CRENNEL: “He’s still working his back and we’ll have to find out what he can do this week.”

CLINKSCALE: Carolina plays on Monday Night Football. How different is that watching the game live rather than studying coaches tape?

CRENNEL: “I think the players are the ones; they are going to have more opportunity to watch the game. I told them to make sure that they watch the game tonight and make notes and watch personnel so that they can get a head start on Carolina. Coaches, we have a particular rhythm we get into. You do certain things on Monday, you do certain things on Tuesday, and if we can get out early enough, then we might be able to catch part of it.”

CLINKSCALE: But you don’t make a point to watch the game unless it’s the next opponent?

CRENNEL: “That’s correct.”

GRETZ: You used three timeouts because of the play clock. What was going on there?

CRENNEL: “Sometimes we took a little bit too long to get everything communicated. Sometimes you want to make sure that everybody is on the same page, so rather than just calling the play, you call the play and you remind so and so that you need to do this and remind so and so that they need to do that. Then, sometimes that clock gets down, and even though we used a timeout, we might have been able to get the play off anyway, but it’s going down and you know how coaches get a little nervous and anxious on the sideline, so rather than get the penalty, called the timeout.”

CLINKSCALE: Can anybody call a timeout down there?

CRENNEL: “Anybody can call a timeout on the field. Any player on the field can call a timeout. On the sideline, generally, the officials will wait for the head coach to make the call. Sometimes, they’re not sure and they hear timeout and if they look and see a coaching uniform, then they’ll give a timeout, but generally, they’ll wait for the head coach.”

GRETZ: What did you like about Stephenson’s performance?

CRENNEL: “The fact that those two rushers weren’t able to get much done against him. I thought he was aggressive as far as his effort downfield, at the line of scrimmage, and he seemed to enjoy the participation. If you can get a guy who enjoys the participation – particularly his first time out against top-notch guys – then maybe you’ve got something to build on.”

GRETZ: Was he a little bit too aggressive on the one where he got flagged downfield?

CRENNEL: “I thought he was falling and he ended up rolling into the guy, and as he rolled, he rolled into the back of the legs a little bit, so that was a good call by the official.”

TEICHER: What’s your level of concern with guys checking out these last five games of the season?

CRENNEL: “That’s always a concern when you get to this point, but like I’ve said all year, I’ve got good guys in the locker room. This team, they have a good attitude. They work hard at practice. I think that they’re going to stay together, and they’re going to try to finish it out. They are going to try to win some of these last games. When you see the effort that was given yesterday, I don’t think that those guys are checking out.”

TEICHER: What about during the week?

CRENNEL: “From the week, I would expect that we would have a better record than what we have because they have good attitudes and they work hard during the week. Like you guys have mentioned what you’ve seen as you come out there. They’ve got energy, and they’ve got good attitudes. So, if you go by what they do during the week, you expect a better record than we have.”

TEICHER: Do you address this issue with them?

CRENNEL: “Sure. I have. I’ve talked to them. I told them in particular last week, I told them this time they have to do something. They have to try to stop this, and they tried on Sunday.”

DANNY CLINKSCALE (SPORTS RADIO 810): So far this season you’ve played your best against pretty good teams. Does that pattern bother you?

CRENNEL: “The thing that I told them is that we have to avoid the let-down, and I use that example you just gave me of the other teams we played hard and have played good against and came close, but then the following week we let down. So, we talked about avoiding that let-down and seeing if we could carry this effort forward.”

GRETZ: Seems like Tyson Jackson is giving you some pass rush?

CRENNEL: “Yes, he has. Tyson works very hard. He’s a conscientious young man. The team started running the ball against our nickel a little bit. We put him in on the nickel, and that’s as a result of him playing the nickel, he’s been able to rush more. He showed up yesterday. They didn’t call it a sack, but really he got a sack. Tyson has been good all year. He is a guy who works very hard. He’s conscientious. It’s important to him.”

TEICHER: Would you say yesterday was his best game all year?

CRENNEL: “It was one of them, overall, because when you look at the plays that he played, playing first, second and third down. I think it was.”

FESCOE: After seeing some really good quarterbacks this season, does that make it more important for you to get that type of quarterback next season?

CRENNEL: “I’m not looking at next season yet. I’m just looking week-to-week because that’s just the way it is.”

ROBERT FORD (610 SPORTS RADIO): Was the pass from Hillis to Quinn an attempt to get a score early in the game?

CRENNEL: “It was an attempt to try to get points on the board because we’ve been running the ball and teams know that we are going to run it. So, we snap it to the guy and he runs over, and the throw back, particularly there, was an opportunity for us. But we didn’t execute it.”

CHIEFS PLAYER QUOTESNOV. 26, 2012

OL DONALD STEPHENSON

Q: Was yesterday’s game a little different for you than the Cincinnati game?

STEPHENSON: “Yeah, Cincinnati, I was trying to feel it out. This game, I knew that if I tried to go out there and try to feel it out and figure out how the game was going to go, I’d probably get my butt kicked so I came out aggressive and knew I had to play hard.”

Q: You probably played against Von Miller in college. How’d that go?

STEPHENSON: “Yeah, I played against him in college. I did alright. He caught me once, but he got a lot of guys that year.”

Q: Was he talking to you about college out there?

STEPHENSON: “No, I really didn’t talk to him.”

Q: How much of a nervous feeling do you have when you know you have a huge responsibility?

STEPHENSON: “The more you prepare yourself through the week and how hard you practice; it kind of gives you more confidence when Sunday comes around. If you don’t prepare right and you don’t practice right, you have a right to go in there a little bit nervous because you don’t have confidence in what you did all week.”

WR JAMAR NEWSOME

Q: When did you know you’d be activated?

NEWSOME: “I didn’t know until Saturday evening, and I didn’t know too much and my agent called me and told me it looks like you’ve been working extremely hard and it’s time to make some plays. And that’s what I tried to do.”

Q: So when you find out on Saturday evening, can you not call you friends and family and have them get on a plane to get to the stadium?

NEWSOME: “I really didn’t think about any of that. I didn’t really want to tell anybody. I told my mom of course, and I told some of my family members. I kept it off of social media, I didn’t want them to know anything. I just wanted my actions to speak more than anything.”

Q: You were targeted multiple times and you had a catch. What kind of thrill was that for you?

NEWSOME: “It was a good thrill. It was just another day, trying to do all I can do to help my team out.”

Q: You’ve been around this team for awhile even though you were just called up. Overall the team isn’t doing well record-wise. What is your sense of how the team is feeling right now?

NEWSOME: “Honestly, we sat and watched the tape today, and just playing yesterday, all the guys are in it still. There is no one that is feeling any bad way about it. Everybody is still trying to go win and doing everything they can do to correct the mistakes. We’re going to play with passion, we’re going to play with aggression, we’re going to pay with energy and effort and that’s what we’re going to continue to do and correct all our mistakes.”

Q: Do you think you did enough to continue getting opportunities?

NEWSOME: “I don’t know. I don’t think there is ever enough that you can do. Like I said, I’m going to continue to keep working hard in practice and keep learning because I’m a young player and that’s what I’m going to do.”

Online Public Information File

Viewers with disabilities can get assistance accessing this station's FCC Public Inspection File by contacting the station with the information listed below. Questions or concerns relating to the accessibility of the FCC's online public file system should be directed to the FCC at 888-225-5322, 888-835-5322 (TTY), or fccinfo@fcc.gov.